For pick-up artists, women are targets. No wonder we don’t want to share a landmass with Julien Blanc
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Version 0 of 1. Last Thursday night, in the wee hours, a sad, tired man with a patchy beard and terrible trousers was forced to slink out of Australia after an outcry from feminist groups convinced the immigration ministry to revoke his visa. “This guy wasn’t putting forward political ideas,” minister Scott Morrison said of banished “dating coach” Julien Blanc, “he was putting forward abuse that was derogatory to women and … those values are abhorred in this country.” But Blanc’s bad week didn’t end there. At the time of writing, nearly 18,000 people and counting have signed a petition to deny him a UK visa as well. Women, apparently, do not want to share a landmass with Julien Blanc. And you can’t exactly blame us. Blanc is a self-styled “pick-up artist”, an odious brand of conman who specialises in “helping” lonely, desperate, socially inept men by turning them into repulsive, entitled, sexually aggressive creeps with horrible fashion sense. He’s currently touring the globe leading expensive seminars and “bootcamps” in which he teaches sad sacks how to violate women’s boundaries through persistence, psychological abuse or outright sexual violence. In one of Blanc’s most widely publicised videos, “White Male Fucks Asian Women in Tokyo (And the Beautiful Methods To It)” (catchy title, bro), he describes “seducing” Japanese women with all the subtlety of a billygoat in rut: “At least in Tokyo, if you’re a white male, you can do what you want. I’m just romping through the streets, just grabbing girls’ heads, just like, head, pfft on the dick. Head, on the dick, yelling, ‘pikachu’, with a pikachu shirt.” Truly, a master of seduction. That anecdote, which Blanc finds so darling and educational, describes nothing short of a violent, racist sexual assault. (And you don’t even have to use your imagination or take my word for it – he recorded his attacks on video, if you have the stomach.) Pick-up artist culture is steeped in the language of coercion, manipulation, and pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo: women are targets to be hunted, maths equations to be solved, literally objects to be “picked up”. Its explicit objective is to disregard women’s signals, and privilege men’s desire over women’s autonomy. In other words, SEXY. I’m sure you’ll hypnotise your sex mongoose in no time, boys. Blanc is a sexual predator teaching sexual predation classes, and it’s likely that many Australian women were spared uncomfortable, dehumanising, if not downright dangerous encounters with his “students”. The revocation of Blanc’s visa is a powerful, institutional investment in women’s safety. Taken alongside – just off the top of my head – the broad mainstream rejection of GamerGate’s misogynist subterfuge, last week’s near-universal revulsion at the harassment of ESPN reporter Cari Champion, this week’s wicked trolling of accused serial rapist Bill Cosby, and the still resounding power of #YesAllWomen, I’m wondering if women’s safety isn’t having a moment right now. If 2015 might be the year of sticking up for the goddamn ladies. It certainly seems like it. (And it’s about time.) Over the weekend, I had coffee with Susie Lee, an artist who, with partner Katrina Hess, recently developed Siren, part art project, part online dating app. It’s an interesting model that prioritises women’s safety: if you’re a woman, when you sign up and create your profile, you’re invisible to 100% of the men on the site. You can see them, but they can’t see you. As you browse, when you come across men you find interesting or attractive, you can make yourself visible to them. They get a notification and can then contact you, if they like you back. It’s an incredibly simple idea that solves so many of the problems endemic to the traditional heterosexual dating model (they’re currently working on a same-sex version too). Women’s safety might be at Siren’s heart, but everyone benefits. Men are forever complaining that they have to take all the “risks” by approaching women (there are some risks inherent in simply being a woman, but we can leave that one there for now), not knowing whether or not they’ll be rejected, while women are constantly being harangued by sexually aggressive men in whom they have no interest. With Siren, men can only contact women they know are interested, and women can only be contacted by men they like. Everybody wins, it seems. Much like pick-up artistry’s cynical legerdemain, traditional models of online dating exploit the masculine duty to barrel through women’s boundaries, as well as the potent cultural conditioning that trains women to be nice, pliant, make ourselves available and be grateful for male attention. Siren, on the other hand, attempts to mirror the way that attraction generally works in real life: one person subtly signals interest, via eye contact or a smile, and the other person, feeling safe and emboldened by those signals, initiates a conversation. So why aren’t men – especially the type of insecure, frightened rabbits drawn to pick-up artistry – lining up in droves for a safe, low-risk app like Siren? Why is there, in fact, angry pushback, like this website comment noted by Seattle newspaper the Stranger: “If a man can’t see the merchandise, he ain’t buying it ... I can go pretty much anywhere and decide whether or not I am visually interested in a woman WITHOUT her snarky permission to do so ... Men won’t use this app and the user base will turn into a lonely, angry clam fest”? Why would heterosexual men not want to look for dates in a clam fest? Isn’t that what you’re there for? Clams? It’s almost as though some men are really there for the power trip. Respect is only a hindrance if your goal is exploitation. There is no reason to object to Siren’s design unless you specifically want to bother women who don’t want to be contacted by you. Just like there’s no reason to fear California’s “Yes Means Yes” bill unless you specifically want to have sex with women who don’t say yes. And there is no reason to turn to pick-up artistry over actual human interaction unless you specifically don’t want to interact with a human. But if what you really want is a date, then what are you so afraid of? Men’s fun and women’s safety aren’t mutually exclusive. |